When you first started playing

I'm a new player of this series and I'm just so overwhelmed by everything!

I have tried to play previous ones but I was a bit naive and didn't understand everything.

Now, though, I feel I have quite an extensive football knowledge and really want to get into this game. I have the demo and it looks great, very realistic. But when I play it I just can't get my head round everything - I have only played one match so far, and this was a AFC Bournemouth vs Bmouth reserves match which ended 2-2. I just wanted to know if I will grow into the game with experience, because at the moment - and it's hard to explain - I can't play it even though I really want to? Were some of you, more experienced players, the same when you started and can you give me any tips on getting into the game? Thanks!

When I began, I was awful.

Actually, I'm still awful now.

yea i drew with my reserves when i started with aston villa then went and won the premier league

just stick at it and get good players and set up a good tactic one which suits the players.

Im playing as Rochdale now in League 1 which is a similar game to yourself and currently i am 3rd in the table with 14 points after 7 games. All i did is do the above. I wouldnt consider myself an expert at the game because in some leagues i suck like in championship and conference.

Also see if there is a Bournemouth team guide on the good player and team guide forum if its active that thread could help you as you are playing with the same team.

I would say start with a good team so you don't get down by keep losing.

Also a big help for me was when i learned the keyboard short cuts for things like team and the next day etc.

There are a few things you need to accept before you can fully allow yourself to be taken away by the game of FM. I found that this game lacks a lot of immersion, regardless of how "realistic" it is. Some things never happen, some things are too stubborn or fiddly to play with and the game lacks a bit of humor and creativity.

This is the reason why through my entire time of playing FM (since CM 97/98) I have always been enticed to play other manager games. I find FM to be dull, unimaginative and sometimes boring. However the realism behind the game, the stats, the tactics are so good compared to other games that you end up being "stuck" playing FM.

As stated, you need to understand and accept the following few things when playing the game.

1. You need some degree of imagination. Why? A lot of things become repetitive in this game. This game is merely a tacticians dream and there isn't much in way of variation. Team talks, tactics, transfer market and lots of matches.

2. Your hard work, when it does eventually pay off will not feel "legendary". This game has a great way of not praising the gamer for his or her efforts. Be prepared to see your players walk off the field after winning the EPL (rather than celebrating) or reading a one liner "XXXXXX have been crowned EPL champions" and maybe a few small news articles about the incident. FM lacks animations and is totally devoid of cut-scene-like video sequences showing trophies, pitch invasions and other "easter egg" like events.

I do not like to compare FM to other games, but at times I am amazed how a role playing game with only 30 people on their team can manage a fully dialogued game and a tonne of video sequenced animations, yet SI with probably the same amount of people on their team seem to be fully devoting their time to number crunching. There seems to be very little in the way of effort on SI's part to include a fun aspect to the game - be it with better graphics, full on celebrations by fans, flares, flags, street parades and many generic animations that could include those "little blobs" running around with a small trophy. I am sure it would not take that much of an effort to do so, but I think that SI have come to the conclusion that everyone plays this game alt tabbed with music playing in the background.

3. Tactics are extreeeeeeemly touchy and the final result is pre-determined as soon as you click "change tactics" and it continues to change every time you make a tactical change. This is why sometimes making a tactical mistake can allow strange things to happen in the game. People will tell you "it happens in real life, just look at arsenal against newcastle". This is also true, but be prepared to experience these things a lot more often in FM than in real life. (using a similar time scale)

4. If you buy the game on release day, be prepared to face bugs and an unfinished/untweaked 3D match engine until February of the next year of release. Also be prepared for the same bugs and issues to return the next time the game is released. I do not know why, but so often bugs solved from FM20XX end up in the next edition again.

5. Very little changes between FM's every year and to be honest, I wouldnt buy the game every year - even though you may feel compelled to do so.

6. The game has terrible graphics for our generation of games. Great match engine, bad graphics - its a shame really. Kills the immersion of it all and that accumilated with point 1 and 2, sometimes makes me stop playing FM months on end (until I get the managing itch again). It also stutters on every machine I own, its incredible. The match engine, even with its woeful graphics still is jumpy and jerky on my i7 970 with dual video cards and 16 GIG ram. It is the same on my older Q9550 on Windows XP 4 gig ram. I heard something about flash and java needing to be updated which causes the issue, even though for my case, the problem couldn't be solved. I can only think to blame the programmers if I need updated java and flash to play a game smoothly (with all other drivers etc up to date).

I hate to say this but there isn't much out there in terms of good manager games.

One of the main reasons I find it hard to ge into FM or justify buying it every year is because of these points mentioned above.

If the game had better graphics, ran smoother (the game still stutters for me on all platforms) and most importantly had some sort of "fun factor" to it that allowed me to enjoy it more than get frustrated then I wouldn't need to "get into the mood" to play FM. I would be addicted to it and would get into it instantly knowing that a quirky event could be right around the corner (ie like a player getting into an altercation, players spitting, going clubbing etc) or even fun things like players befriending you, players throwing parties. I am not asking for huge programmed lines of text and animations but just adding some "fluff" to the game to fill out all the database and number crunching.

People will say "go play FIFA Manager if you want that kind of stuff" and to a degree I would if FIFA Manager had the same match engine as FM. Shame that it doesn't and shame that FIFA Manager also has too much fluff. (we dont need to design our suit or have a personal life). I would be so happy to find something with FM's match engine but somewhere in between when FIFA and FM when it comes to everything else.

This is where SI should be very careful as they are taking their whole game and genre for granted. I would suspect a hat full of people would never play FM again if EA Sports were to take a different direction to their match engine (and possibly get a new dev team for that alone.)

I don't know but sometimes, I feel like there is more thinking to do in FM than one would do at an actual job or even managing for real.

Thats why I can't get into FM and I think if you understand these factors and accept FM for what it is, a boring but realistic simulation (a hardcore simulation without any fluff) then you can start to get into it.

Sydney666

There are a few things you need to accept before you can fully allow yourself to be taken away by the game of FM. I found that this game lacks a lot of immersion, regardless of how "realistic" it is. Some things never happen, some things are too stubborn or fiddly to play with and the game lacks a bit of humor and creativity.

This is the reason why through my entire time of playing FM (since CM 97/98) I have always been enticed to play other manager games. I find FM to be dull, unimaginative and sometimes boring. However the realism behind the game, the stats, the tactics are so good compared to other games that you end up being "stuck" playing FM.

As stated, you need to understand and accept the following few things when playing the game.

1. You need some degree of imagination. Why? A lot of things become repetitive in this game. This game is merely a tacticians dream and there isn't much in way of variation. Team talks, tactics, transfer market and lots of matches.

2. Your hard work, when it does eventually pay off will not feel "legendary". This game has a great way of not praising the gamer for his or her efforts. Be prepared to see your players walk off the field after winning the EPL (rather than celebrating) or reading a one liner "XXXXXX have been crowned EPL champions" and maybe a few small news articles about the incident. FM lacks animations and is totally devoid of cut-scene-like video sequences showing trophies, pitch invasions and other "easter egg" like events.

I do not like to compare FM to other games, but at times I am amazed how a role playing game with only 30 people on their team can manage a fully dialogued game and a tonne of video sequenced animations, yet SI with probably the same amount of people on their team seem to be fully devoting their time to number crunching. There seems to be very little in the way of effort on SI's part to include a fun aspect to the game - be it with better graphics, full on celebrations by fans, flares, flags, street parades and many generic animations that could include those "little blobs" running around with a small trophy. I am sure it would not take that much of an effort to do so, but I think that SI have come to the conclusion that everyone plays this game alt tabbed with music playing in the background.

3. Tactics are extreeeeeeemly touchy and the final result is pre-determined as soon as you click "change tactics" and it continues to change every time you make a tactical change. This is why sometimes making a tactical mistake can allow strange things to happen in the game. People will tell you "it happens in real life, just look at arsenal against newcastle". This is also true, but be prepared to experience these things a lot more often in FM than in real life. (using a similar time scale)

4. If you buy the game on release day, be prepared to face bugs and an unfinished/untweaked 3D match engine until February of the next year of release. Also be prepared for the same bugs and issues to return the next time the game is released. I do not know why, but so often bugs solved from FM20XX end up in the next edition again.

5. Very little changes between FM's every year and to be honest, I wouldnt buy the game every year - even though you may feel compelled to do so.

6. The game has terrible graphics for our generation of games. Great match engine, bad graphics - its a shame really. Kills the immersion of it all and that accumilated with point 1 and 2, sometimes makes me stop playing FM months on end (until I get the managing itch again). It also stutters on every machine I own, its incredible. The match engine, even with its woeful graphics still is jumpy and jerky on my i7 970 with dual video cards and 16 GIG ram. It is the same on my older Q9550 on Windows XP 4 gig ram. I heard something about flash and java needing to be updated which causes the issue, even though for my case, the problem couldn't be solved. I can only think to blame the programmers if I need updated java and flash to play a game smoothly (with all other drivers etc up to date).

I hate to say this but there isn't much out there in terms of good manager games.

One of the main reasons I find it hard to ge into FM or justify buying it every year is because of these points mentioned above.

If the game had better graphics, ran smoother (the game still stutters for me on all platforms) and most importantly had some sort of "fun factor" to it that allowed me to enjoy it more than get frustrated then I wouldn't need to "get into the mood" to play FM. I would be addicted to it and would get into it instantly knowing that a quirky event could be right around the corner (ie like a player getting into an altercation, players spitting, going clubbing etc) or even fun things like players befriending you, players throwing parties. I am not asking for huge programmed lines of text and animations but just adding some "fluff" to the game to fill out all the database and number crunching.

People will say "go play FIFA Manager if you want that kind of stuff" and to a degree I would if FIFA Manager had the same match engine as FM. Shame that it doesn't and shame that FIFA Manager also has too much fluff. (we dont need to design our suit or have a personal life). I would be so happy to find something with FM's match engine but somewhere in between when FIFA and FM when it comes to everything else.

This is where SI should be very careful as they are taking their whole game and genre for granted. I would suspect a hat full of people would never play FM again if EA Sports were to take a different direction to their match engine (and possibly get a new dev team for that alone.)

I don't know but sometimes, I feel like there is more thinking to do in FM than one would do at an actual job or even managing for real.

Thats why I can't get into FM and I think if you understand these factors and accept FM for what it is, a boring but realistic simulation (a hardcore simulation without any fluff) then you can start to get into it.

Sydney666

........boring!

I think I enjoyed it more when I didnt have a clue what was going on. The first time I played I was in the lowest league in england and didnt know anything about none league, I didn't realise scout reports and assistant manager reports existed until the end of the season so had just tried to sign players with stats I thought looked good and played them even though they were probably one star players, I didnt used to come on here so I just made this tactic up myself and hoped for the best and in the end I got to the playoff final in my first season. Now the magics gone a bit and I think I let my assistant manager do way too much for me xD

I think I enjoyed it most when I first started playing and buying new players and scoring was very exciting - when you just pick a team from the EPL and see what happens. After that came the middle period where you get second season syndrome and then start to delve more into the mechanics of the game. Very frustrating, boring, and time consuming. Took me nearly 2 years to get to some sort of understanding of the game and want to take on a challenge like BSS/BSN to EPL. I would say I'm still learning now but I feel I have some sort of grasp on the game, it's not as fun as when you first start playing and the feeling of reward is rare and small.

There are a few things you need to accept before you can fully allow yourself to be taken away by the game of FM. I found that this game lacks a lot of immersion, regardless of how "realistic" it is. Some things never happen, some things are too stubborn or fiddly to play with and the game lacks a bit of humor and creativity.

This is the reason why through my entire time of playing FM (since CM 97/98) I have always been enticed to play other manager games. I find FM to be dull, unimaginative and sometimes boring. However the realism behind the game, the stats, the tactics are so good compared to other games that you end up being "stuck" playing FM.

As stated, you need to understand and accept the following few things when playing the game.

1. You need some degree of imagination. Why? A lot of things become repetitive in this game. This game is merely a tacticians dream and there isn't much in way of variation. Team talks, tactics, transfer market and lots of matches.

2. Your hard work, when it does eventually pay off will not feel "legendary". This game has a great way of not praising the gamer for his or her efforts. Be prepared to see your players walk off the field after winning the EPL (rather than celebrating) or reading a one liner "XXXXXX have been crowned EPL champions" and maybe a few small news articles about the incident. FM lacks animations and is totally devoid of cut-scene-like video sequences showing trophies, pitch invasions and other "easter egg" like events.

I do not like to compare FM to other games, but at times I am amazed how a role playing game with only 30 people on their team can manage a fully dialogued game and a tonne of video sequenced animations, yet SI with probably the same amount of people on their team seem to be fully devoting their time to number crunching. There seems to be very little in the way of effort on SI's part to include a fun aspect to the game - be it with better graphics, full on celebrations by fans, flares, flags, street parades and many generic animations that could include those "little blobs" running around with a small trophy. I am sure it would not take that much of an effort to do so, but I think that SI have come to the conclusion that everyone plays this game alt tabbed with music playing in the background.

3. Tactics are extreeeeeeemly touchy and the final result is pre-determined as soon as you click "change tactics" and it continues to change every time you make a tactical change. This is why sometimes making a tactical mistake can allow strange things to happen in the game. People will tell you "it happens in real life, just look at arsenal against newcastle". This is also true, but be prepared to experience these things a lot more often in FM than in real life. (using a similar time scale)

4. If you buy the game on release day, be prepared to face bugs and an unfinished/untweaked 3D match engine until February of the next year of release. Also be prepared for the same bugs and issues to return the next time the game is released. I do not know why, but so often bugs solved from FM20XX end up in the next edition again.

5. Very little changes between FM's every year and to be honest, I wouldnt buy the game every year - even though you may feel compelled to do so.

6. The game has terrible graphics for our generation of games. Great match engine, bad graphics - its a shame really. Kills the immersion of it all and that accumilated with point 1 and 2, sometimes makes me stop playing FM months on end (until I get the managing itch again). It also stutters on every machine I own, its incredible. The match engine, even with its woeful graphics still is jumpy and jerky on my i7 970 with dual video cards and 16 GIG ram. It is the same on my older Q9550 on Windows XP 4 gig ram. I heard something about flash and java needing to be updated which causes the issue, even though for my case, the problem couldn't be solved. I can only think to blame the programmers if I need updated java and flash to play a game smoothly (with all other drivers etc up to date).

I hate to say this but there isn't much out there in terms of good manager games.

One of the main reasons I find it hard to ge into FM or justify buying it every year is because of these points mentioned above.

If the game had better graphics, ran smoother (the game still stutters for me on all platforms) and most importantly had some sort of "fun factor" to it that allowed me to enjoy it more than get frustrated then I wouldn't need to "get into the mood" to play FM. I would be addicted to it and would get into it instantly knowing that a quirky event could be right around the corner (ie like a player getting into an altercation, players spitting, going clubbing etc) or even fun things like players befriending you, players throwing parties. I am not asking for huge programmed lines of text and animations but just adding some "fluff" to the game to fill out all the database and number crunching.

People will say "go play FIFA Manager if you want that kind of stuff" and to a degree I would if FIFA Manager had the same match engine as FM. Shame that it doesn't and shame that FIFA Manager also has too much fluff. (we dont need to design our suit or have a personal life). I would be so happy to find something with FM's match engine but somewhere in between when FIFA and FM when it comes to everything else.

This is where SI should be very careful as they are taking their whole game and genre for granted. I would suspect a hat full of people would never play FM again if EA Sports were to take a different direction to their match engine (and possibly get a new dev team for that alone.)

I don't know but sometimes, I feel like there is more thinking to do in FM than one would do at an actual job or even managing for real.

Thats why I can't get into FM and I think if you understand these factors and accept FM for what it is, a boring but realistic simulation (a hardcore simulation without any fluff) then you can start to get into it.

Sydney666

Way to go in trying to turn somebody away from the game. An extremely negative post.

Back on topic - Some tips for getting into the game; pick a team you love, pick a sleeping giant and make them great, maybe try lower league management as I know a lot of people really get into this, you could set up a network game with a friend if you have any that play it or maybe arrange it in these forums with other like minded souls, or you could give yourself 500million and cheat your way to the top! It's your game so it's entirely up to you.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but It sounds to me like you find it a bit daunting as there seems like so much you have to look into or sort out. It can seem like this when you first start playing but you will quickly find that a lot of the features could be considered gimmicks and not really that important to winning or losing, for instance the ass man feedback is just nonsense a lot of the time. If I actually followed some of his advice my team would have been spanked in some games so I never listen to him, and then theres opposition instructions which I have never touched and have still been very successful (I'm sure some people would disagree with me though). I guess it just boils down to the fact that Some people like to role play and others just want to get results and steam roller everything. It all depends on the individual.

What I do think are the most important factors when starting a new save are; team talks, getting good scouts, coaches and physio's (if you can).Training (can be pretty daunting but you can download very effective pre made ones). Tactics (again, can be pretty tough depending on your football knowledge, but you can also download some excellent pre made tactics). I think if you stick to this at the start of every save, and not worry so much about all the other stuff, you will do okay and it wont be quite so daunting. Eventually you will figure out how you like to play the game and will probably end up disagreeing with most of my post!

Hope this helps.

football manager is amazing when you first play it, honestly fm 2007 was the first one i played and i had an amazing game going with grimsby and i never got bored of it at all but now i struggle to get past the first season

WALL OF TEXT

Since noone is giving you any love for this post, I thought I might. I agree with a lot of things you said, especially how, after playing for a few seasons, you know there are NO quirky little events just around the corner. It would add a lot of fun to the game to know that something unexpected could happen at any time, but it just doesn't.

You can treat your players any way you like, if you bring home the bacon for the team they will still gladly play for you and never become unhappy. I find that disturbing.

The fun in the game, for me anyway, lies in seeing your players grow, each one with their own unique performance curve. But this is a very "long run" perspective, and imo the game needs more things to get out of its rut of pre-match talk/match day/post-match talk etc. More quirky events please!

For the OP, yes the game can be quite daunting with all the numbers and not knowing which numbers to focus on, but sooner or later it'll all stick, and make sense. Learn a little at a time, and trust me when I say you need not be a tactical expert in order to enjoy this game. There is a lot of fun to be had in many aspects of the game. Player interaction, while sometimes stale and even at times dumb, can be a really fun way of deciphering player personalities.

One tip to make the game more living is to open the tab for Team Motivation during a match. You can see if someone is feeling motivated, having a good game, a poor game, or maybe feeling uninterested or complacent. You'll soon start noticing patterns here, and I find that the more I understand my players, the closer I feel to my team.

For me, starting a new save is boring at first too, I don't know any of the players and it all seems a big mess, but halfway through the season I've gotten to know them a little better, and that's where the fun starts.

Dive right into it man, there is a lot of fun to be had..

Start with your favorite club, play a few seasons. Wrap your head around training, reserve team, youth team, board requests, transfers, properly placing your players on the field, understanding the attributes of the players, understanding the tactics. If it makes you feel better It took me 3 months when I first started playing to properly feel that I can play it.

When I first started playing (the amiga days) I played with my big bro was always good fun

When i first got Championship Manager 99-00 with my first PC for Christmas 1999, i just wanted to continue to the match and was quite overwhelmed by everything that needed doing.

Gradually got into it and ventured into the Finances, Scouting, Player Searches, Contracts etc

Luckily i've grown up with FM, so each new change is an addition rather than throwing dozens of features in my face. I can see how overwhelming it can seem to someone new to the series though, theres a heck of a lot to do now; i've spent more time dealing with issues in FM11 than any other installment. Not sure whether that's a good thing...

What FM really needs is some analysis tooltips or replays where it teaches you or shows you via a replay of game maybe where you went wrong or how you could have done things differently to win the game. That would be amazing. Right now the only thing that tells you what's going on in the game is the ingame stats and half the time you're still guessing what is going on. I've played this game since cm03/04 and i'm still trying to learn this thing.. lol

Nothing frustrates me more then somewhat random nature of some games. I know it's realistic approach but still! Beat Man U away then lose next game at home to West Brom.

There is an analysis feature. It's brand new in FM11. Infact, it's very useful if you actually know how to use it.

What FM really needs is some analysis tooltips or replays where it teaches you or shows you via a replay of game maybe where you went wrong or how you could have done things differently to win the game. That would be amazing. Right now the only thing that tells you what's going on in the game is the ingame stats and half the time you're still guessing what is going on. I've played this game since cm03/04 and i'm still trying to learn this thing.. lol

Nothing frustrates me more then somewhat random nature of some games. I know it's realistic approach but still! Beat Man U away then lose next game at home to West Brom.

There is an analysis feature. It's brand new in FM11. Infact, it's very useful if you actually know how to use it.

Yup I agree, it's a brilliant feature you can easily see every players performance down to the last pass, and if you click on the tactics screen the game will show you the action (it works for everything, pass, tackle, shooting, crosses)

Did anyone play sensible world of soccer manager back in the day? You used to get called into the chairmans office where a 3d video of your chairman sat at his desk would be played and he would be talking away to you. Very cartoonish at the time but was quite interesting and fun. Perhaps this could be brought into the game in years to come.

I am sorry if people found my post to be negative. I felt it was constructive and honest in terms of my own opinion.

As for it being a wall of text, It was properly structured and had numerous, if not excessive paragraphs.

I apologise on behalf of all of you who

1. Are fanbois of any game. No matter how much you love something, it can always be improved and saying something is perfect and not accepting its flaws only undermines the advancement of the game.

2. Can't read 1 or 2 pages of text without being bored.

3. Can't accept, understand or comprehend a persons view and answer like an imbecile.

4. That just HAVE to be antagnostic in behaviour and always make threads become a "youtube" style flame war...

I quoted "wall of text" for simplicity's sake, numerous ppl before me had quoted your entire post and I didn't feel I had to do it again. Strange though that you choose to comment on that and seemingly ignore the fact that I said I agree with you..